Vs FC Tokyo (away) 18/3/17, J-League match 4

 

FC Tokyo 3 - 0 Kawasaki Frontale

Not the best day for Frontale fans. The first Tamagawa Classico of 2017 ended with a scoreline that flattered FC Tokyo a bit, but you can’t really say we deserved anything more than a draw at best. It also, I hope, saw the majority of Frontale fans getting real about Okubo. He has gone and he doesn’t care about us anymore. I’m not sure he cared about us much previously to be honest. He’s always seemed to be more interested in himself, but his whinging, nasty foul on Kengo, massive over-celebration of what was hardly a significant goal in terms of the result of the game and then showboating afterwards left a particularly bad taste in the mouth for me. But then I guess I wasn’t particularly fond of him last year. He’s now dead to me though. There was a crushing inevitability that he’d get his first FC Tokyo goal against us, but by the time it went in, the game was already well lost, so that takes away the frustration a little bit I guess.

Our starting line-up looked fairly solid, with only the defence changed from the Guangzhou game. Sung-Ryong continued in goal, Tasaka was back at right back, Nara and Taniguchi in the middle and Kurumaya on the left. In front of them, Oshima and Neto, then Kobayashi, Nakamura and Nobori with Abe as the lone frontman again. Hasegawa kept his place on the bench, presumably after a decent substitute performance against Guangzhou. The rest of the bench was made up of the usual suspects, Arai, Moriya, Itakura, Morimoto, Miyoshi and Rhayner. The stadium was pretty full and we were in pretty good voice before the game. I don’t remember it happening last year, but when they played ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, presumably aiming for that hairs on the back of the neck moment, they did a harsh fade, which almost sounded like the backing track had just cut out. I guess the intention was that a wall of FC Tokyo fans would blast us into submission, but it seemed like maybe most people didn’t know the words or something. Their fans did seem a bit flat to be honest, considering this is a match that both teams really want to win. Most of the noise they made until they scored seemed to be booing any possession we had.

We started the game brightly (I say this every week. I wish I could say that we started brightly and continued in the same way…) and looked more like the home team for a while. We had lots of possession and were making a few chances. From a corner Tasaka had a header cleared off the line. Neto seemed to think it was over, judging by the replay, but as we were at the other end of the ground, I have no idea. As usual, we were gifting the opposition a few chances too. I wouldn’t say it was a bad tempered game, but they definitely seemed to be leaving the boot in quite often. Once again it looked like the ref had left his cards in the changing room. We need to work out how to deal with this though as it’s happening all the time. We start brightly and then get a bit of rough treatment and start to crumble. Nara was doing pretty well, possibly charged up by the fact that he was on loan at FC Tokyo a couple of seasons ago and they hardly played him. He seems to be improving every week at the moment. Long may that continue. Okubo had a couple of chances, one where he tried a ridiculous overhead that went sailing over the bar and possibly out of the stadium and one where he had the ball in the net but which was ruled out for offside. Nobori broke out of defence with the ball, ran almost the length of the pitch and had a shot saved by the keeper. I think this is the closest he has got to reproducing the lyrics of his song for a while to be honest. We were a bit sloppy playing the ball out of defence again. I think this is definitely something we need to work on. Everyone now knows we don’t really hoof it long as we are a team of midgets, so they just pressure us at the back and we give them the ball. Maybe we need to have a bit more variation. Half time, and 0-0 was about right really. Neither team looked like they wanted to win the match.

The second half started with a bit of pressure from Tokyo. The fouly nature of the game continued and the ref seemed to be handing out plenty of ‘final’ warnings. On 56 minutes, Abe, who had a pretty quite game, much like plenty of his teammates, was replaced by Rhayner. Kobayashi moved up front and Rhayner took his place on the right wing. Rhayner had a decent chance to get his first Frontale goal when he raced through on goal and was squashed in a FC Tokyo defender sandwich. Looked like a foul to me, but the ref bottled it. Rhayner must really be questioning the rules of the game in Japan. He gets smacked around every week and only seems to pick up yellow cards rather than be awarded free kicks. Shortly after Rhayner came on, FC Tokyo brought on big money feller Peter Utaka presumably to give them more physical presence up front. Okubo hadn’t really been adding anything to their game, mainly moaning in the centre circle (reminiscent of last season!), but he still seems to be unsubstitutable. On 71 minutes, Oniki subsituted Neto and brought on Hasegawa. Have no idea about this one to be honest. I think it was a good idea to bring on Hasegawa, but not sure if Neto was injured (he walked round the pitch after being taken off, so I guess not, but who knows) or this was a tactical change. If it was the latter, it was another stinker. It’s probably no coincidence that after this change FC Tokyo started scoring. They bring on their bulky physical player and we remove our best tackling defensive midfielder. Kengo seemed to drop back into the gap left by Neto and Hasegawa moved to the right wing, Rhayner switching to the left. But to be honest, the formation was a bit squishy at this stage and it was a little difficult to work out who was supposed to be where. We started resorting to hitting long balls a little, from goal kicks and out of defence. So, basically giving the ball to their defenders. We were still creating some chances though, but as usual, our finishing wasn’t up to scratch. Also, we were over-passing it. It was a relief to see Rhayner and Hasegawa actually have a shot, as we seem all too often to want to pass the ball into the net. Their first goal was another stinker to concede. A low cross deflected off Tasaka’s boot onto Sung-Ryong’s standing leg and rolled into the goal. Unlucky, but you maybe would have hoped that someone could have done a bit more to stop it to be honest. So, one down we pushed for an equaliser. Miyoshi was brought on for Nobori. But the inevitable happened and they caught us out on a quick counter attack. Their second came from a cross to Utaka who got to the ball ahead of Kurumaya. Probably shouldn’t have let them get the cross in or let Utaka get to the ball first, but it seems like we were crumbling pretty badly at this stage. We had loads of players back, but still somehow it managed to be three on three in our penalty box. Their third came from a massive hoof which was headed away by Nara, but only to Okubo, who did a quick one-two with Utaka and rounded Sung-Ryong. We were caught flat-footed again. Not sure if we were trying to play an offside trap (it was nowhere near offside…) or we were just struggling to recover from being sucker punched for the second goal. It was poor though… Okubo, celebrated wildly, as if he had just scored the winner in a crucial game, when in fact it was just another goal in a game that was already won for them. Guess he was pleased to finally get a goal, but he could have showed a bit of class. But then again, it is Okubo, so maybe class isn’t in his vocabulary. After he scored he was showboating on the ball. Like I said, classy guy. I now truly hope he has a torrid season.

So, our first defeat of the season and it was a heavy one. Although the scoreline flattered Tokyo a little, I can’t say we really deserved to get anything from the game. We had more shots than them (apparently 10 to their 7) but they had more on target than we did (we had 3 and they had 4). The number of free kicks says something. We had 30 and they had 16. It’s clear that was part of their game plan, but we couldn’t deal with it. Teams know that even if they foul us, unless it’s just outside the box, all we are going to do is play the ball short, so it becomes a no-brainer for them. Foul and disrupt our attacks and give themselves time to get back in position. We need some more variation I think as we are way too predictable at the moment. Positives and negatives. Negatives first. No-one played particularly well. Nara had a great 70 minutes but I’m sure he’ll be disappointed by the way the second and third goals went in. Our delivery from set pieces was terrible (aside from the first chance we had which was cleared off the line) and all our crosses seemed to go straight to their keeper. We created chances but never really threatened their goal. We still don’t really have an effective plan for our front four. We have an abundance of players who can make chances but no-one who wants to try to take them. Again a bit of a dodgy ref in my opinion. Their 27 should probably have been sent off for a second yellow, but I’m clutching at straws a little. The weird Neto substitution is confusing. In a way, I think I’d prefer to hear that Neto had a slight injury as if it was a tactical move, we probably have something to worry about managerially. Hopefully he’s still learning though, but we can’t afford many more of these strange decisions. Not sure anyone would have thought that Igawa would make a good right back at this stage of his career or that we would better deal with a physical forward by replacing our midfield muscle with a winger.  And maybe the biggest negative of all, the fact that the whinging brat Okubo managed to score against us. He really has no class, clattering into the back of Kengo in a terrible foul, showboating and wildly celebrating. I just hope that the Frontale fans realise that he doesn’t care about us and possibly never really did. He cares only about himself and we should let it go. By all means give him a clap before the game, but we really don’t need to be fawning over him at the end of the game shouting ‘ganbare!’. Move on. Positives… hmmmm. The performance maybe wasn’t as bad as the scoreline suggested…. that’s about it. I can’t think of anything else.

Now, we have a bit of a break as it’s international time. None of our players have been selected for the national side, so maybe we can use the time to work on what we are doing wrong. It’s been a mixed start to the season with some decent results but without any decent performances really. Our next game is away at Sendai who started quite well, but have fallen off a bit recently. We really need to get back on track there. I hope Oniki can use the short break well and sort out a few of the issues we are having. Back to the drawing board maybe. Anyway, I guess we could all do with a bit of a break after this game. Go (and sort some things out hopefully) Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
FW 8. ABE Hiroyuki

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota
FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki

MF 13. MIYOSHI Koji (on for NOBORIZATO 82')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for NETO 71')
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro
FW 22. RHAYNER (on for ABE 56')
MF 28. ITAKURA Ko

Goals  

JUNG (Frontale) Own Goal 76' 1-0
UTAKA (FC Tokyo) 86' 2-0
OKUBO (FC Tokyo) 90+2'  3-0


Highlights

The Frontale youtube channel has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that last year's highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer highlights here if you want.

 

Vs Guangzhou Evergrande (away) 14/3/17, ACL Group Stage Match 3

Guangzhou Evergrande 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

I’ll keep things fairly brief today as this was the first match this season I haven’t seen in person. [Having finished writing it up now, it looks like I was being a bit optimistic about the whole brevity thing...]. I watched it on TV in a pub so can’t really give any insight that anyone else who watched the game on TV couldn't do. Before the game, I’m sure we would have gladly taken this result, but after 90 minutes, or more accurately after the second 45 minutes, 1-1 feels a little bit like a let down. However, we can’t ignore the fact that our first half was pretty bad and that we only managed to get the equaliser in the 96th minute, so maybe the draw was fair after all.

We started the game with a much stronger side than we put out against Eastern. This always looked like being our most difficult group game. The Chinese Super League teams have a lot of money, and whilst Guangzhou’s foreigners are not quite in the same league as the Shanghai teams are (lots of big names and big money signings) they are still the most successful team in the Chinese Super League and are managed by a world cup winning manager. It seemed we must have had a late injury to Tasaka as he was with the squad but didn’t make either the starting line-up or the bench. Also, I think the fact that Chinen was on the bench reinforces this assumption. He’s one for the future, but it seems likely that he was along on the trip to make up the numbers in the event of a last minute injury, seeing as this is his first appearance in any squad this season. Oniki went with Sung-Ryong in goal and a slightly strange back four of Igawa at right back, Taniguchi and Kurumaya in the middle and Nobori at left back.  The midfield was Itakura, Neto and Oshima in the more defensive roles and Nakamura, Abe and Kobayashi ahead of them. Today it was Kobayashi’s turn to lead the line, the attacking end of the pitch being shuffled again. On the bench we had Arai, Morimoto, Miyoshi, Hasegawa, Moriya, Chinen and Kano. Quite an attacking bench which probably reflects more on our numerous defensive injuries at the moment rather than being any statement of intent. By the way, what I considered to be the formation differs from what they said on the Frontale website. Guess these things are fairly fluid anyway, but if you want the official word on it, you can check it here.

The first half was a bit of a disaster for us. We looked ultra shaky, totally over-awed by the experience and out of our depth. Guangzhou were a strong and physical side and were causing us a few problems. Thankfully, Alan and Goulart, two of their Brazilian ‘wonders’ were proving to be very wasteful in front of goal. Goulart had a particularly bad game I thought. Not sure he hit the target with any of his shots. Unfortunately, Alan did hit the target once and scored, which was pretty much the only thing he did in the game, apart from dive and pretend to have head and back injuries, but these were apparently enough to secure him the man of the match. The goal came from a massive hoof upfield that Goulart was able to get to way ahead of Igawa, who looked tired and slow (don’t blame him for eithero of these things, by the way), and cross for Alan to complete his contribution to the game. Nobori and Kurumaya were unfortunately both unable to get anywhere near him to stop the shot. Sung-Ryong didn’t do particularly well with it either, but he was making some great saves to keep us in the game. He also was doing some pretty bad kicks to put us in trouble (one which was basically a pass to Alan who was free in front of our goal). But if he saves the shots, I guess the kicks don’t matter as much. We were really under a lot of pressure in the first half. Our passing wasn’t working and we looked very nervy. Think we only really had one good opportunity which was when Abe got the ball and drove a low hard shot toward the near post corner which the keeper just about managed to stop. Things really weren’t working and on 36 minutes Oniki made an early sub, replacing Itakura, who hadn’t at all looked like the player we know he is, with Morimoto to presumably give us a bit more muscle up front. At the same time he seemed to reshuffle the back four with Igawa going into the middle and Kurumaya to left back and Nobori to right back. Not sure why this wasn’t how we were playing from the start to be honest and I guess it has to go down as a bit of a blunder from a relatively inexperienced manager.  All in all, I was relieved to get to half time at just 1-0. Guangzhou weren’t looking great, particularly at the back, but we were looking pretty bad.

The second half began in much better style for us. We started to create more chances and we were really pinning Guangzhou back and restricting them to counter attacks. We had an absolutely stonewall penalty, (at least in my eyes), turned down when Morimoto was shoved to the floor whilst on the ball in the box and I was beginning to curse our refereeing luck in the ACL. Alan was a particularly offensive stain on the second half, constantly whinging, claiming injuries and fouls and trying his best to get Taniguchi sent of. There were a lot of dives from Guangzhou players. Has there been a rule change and people no longer get booked for this kind of thing? If you’re in the box and go down claiming a penalty but the ref decides there was no foul, should you not be cautioned for simulation? It’s probably a good thing I’m not a ref as games would end up being 7-a-side most of the time. On 60 minutes our defensive injury crisis sank to new depths as Igawa had to be stretchered off after getting a whack on the knee defending a cross. Definitely not the fault of the Guangzhou player who hit him, just one of those things. So, time for another defensive reshuffle. Kurumaya went back into the middle and Hasegawa came on at left back. Last seen playing as a centre-forward, Hasegawa has played as a full back before, I just can’t remember when… He was a revelation though, really causing Guangzhou some problems and doing a great defensive job too. Around 70 minutes Kobayashi hit the inside of the post, and when 9 times out of 10 it would go into the net, tonight was the night it bounced straight back out to him and his second attempt was off-target. I could have sworn it was in, was celebrating and was confused why it had been ruled out until I saw the replay. Bit embarrassing, but guess I wasn’t the only person in the pub who thought it was a goal. Guangzhou were really hanging on at this stage and we creating chance after chance, but as has been the case recently, they weren’t going in for one reason or another. On 82 minutes, Morimoto the substitute was substituted, (never a great feeling I would imagine) and Miyoshi was brought on. Morimoto had done a decent job of getting in the Guangzhou faces I thought, but he still looks horribly short of form and confidence. I really hope he can get back on track soon. Miyoshi did his usual thing of getting hold of the ball and running at defenders, but it looked like we were running out of time. Guangzhou suddenly appeared to be getting lengthy injuries all over the pitch. I’m not saying they were time-wasting, but their physio was certainly getting some slow jogging practice. As we approached 90 minutes the ref signaled four minutes of injury time. This coincided with their keeper going down injured for something approaching a couple of minutes. Shortly afterwards we were awarded a penalty for what was one of the most audacious attempts at a foul/ridiculous pieces of defending (delete as appropriate, but either way it was pretty funny…) when a Guangzhou defender managed to do a jumping handball with his left arm and then followed it up by punching the ball away with his right. I can’t remember ever having such amusement combined with such exhilaration. Kobayashi stepped up in his new capacity as our official penalty taker with I imagine a fair bit of pressure on him. The Guangzhou keeper was kind enough to point to where Kobayashi should put the ball, dived the other way and Kobayashi followed his instructions. Credit to the ref and linesman for giving the decision at such a late stage and in a massively partisan stadium. It was pretty clear cut, but under a lot of pressure, I’m glad they could do the right thing. Not sure how the Guangzhou players could have to cheek to argue with the decision. Guess they were saying it was outside the box. It was great to see Abe grab the ball out of the net and run back to the centre circle too. Although there wasn’t really much time to grab a winner, it’s nice that we had the confidence to consider it.

So, all in all, maybe a fair result as this truly was a game of two halves. We were woeful for most of the first half, but came out fighting in the second and did a fine job of it. In the end we could consider ourselves unfortunate to not have won, but I think we have to be realistic and remember quite how bad we were in the first 45. Positives and negatives. Positives first. Great performance from Hasegawa getting us out of a hole. Pleased to see Kobayashi put away a penalty under a lot of pressure. Sung-Ryong made some great saves. And a draw in what we thought would be our toughest group game. Negatives, Sung-Ryong’s kicking, our general first half performance which was nervy, uncoordinated and sloppy and most of all Oniki’s greatest tactical mistake so far, imagining that Igawa would be a good selection at right back. I know it’s still early days in his managerial career, but that was a clanger. I’m sure he has learned from it. Also, I guess we should be a little concerned that we now seem to have a huge amount of injured defenders. Igawa looks like he’ll be out for a while so he joins Elsinho and Takeoka on the long term injured list. Tasaka has picked up something, but not sure how bad that is, Edu is still coming back from his shoulder operation, no idea how long that will be and Michael, well, that’s a real mystery, but apparently he’s injured too. Thankfully Nara will be available for the league games and Hasegawa has shown himself more than capable of playing at left back. I wonder if we’ll see him there on Saturday against Tokyo. I also wonder if Tabinas is nearing his debut or at least a place on the bench. I’m quite excited to see him platy.

So, a few days rest and then we’re off to the Ajinomoto stadium for the Tamagawa Classico. Okubo, who has been having a patchy time so far at FC Tokyo will presumably play his first blinder for them and ruin our day, but I hope we can take some of the confidence we have got from a decent result in China into the game. I’d love a repeat of last year’s scoreline, but I’m sure that FC Tokyo, many people’s pick for the title this year will have something to say about that. In any case, I’m sure we’ll give it a go! Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 4. IGAWA Yusuke

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo (Yellow card 16')

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 28. ITAKURA Ko

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki
MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota
FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (on for ITAKURA 34')

MF 13. MIYOSHI Koji (on for MORIMOTO 81')

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya (on for IGAWA 60')
MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro
FW 20. CHINEN Kei
MF 25. KANO Kenta

Goals  
ALAN (Guangzhou) 26' 1-0
KOBAYASHI (Frontale) PEN 90+4' 1-1


Highlights

Vs Kashiwa Reysol (home) 10/3/17, J-League match 3

Kawasaki Frontale 2 - 1 Kashiwa Reysol 

Off to Todoroki on a Friday night. In the UK I probably would complain about games being switched to Friday night as it doesn’t make it very easy for fans to get to them. Marinos fans had to schlep all the way out to Kashima for their fixture, but we were lucky this time and were at home. I understand why they want to move games around given ACL fixtures congestion and I’m not moaning because I don’t work on Friday, so these games actually seem like quite a fun thing for me. But I wouldn’t be so pleased if I was a hardcore fan with a 9-5 job who had to miss one of their team’s games because they couldn’t travel hundreds of miles between work and a 7pm kick off. This was a weird game. We could quite easily have won it 5-1. But equally, we could easily have lost 3-2. I guess games swing on small incidents and thankfully, this game swung just far enough in our direction. Not saying that I don’t think we deserved to win. I think we did. But we were under a lot of pressure at times and we missed a few sitters. It was definitely an entertaining night’s football though. Although I appreciate it’s much easier to say that as a Frontale fan.

Once again, Oniki shuffled the attacking end of the team. I guess the work in progress part of our team is definitely in this area at the moment. There is a bit of tinkering going on at the back too, but we can probably say that the area up front is where we need more work. We still haven’t found quite the right mix up front yet and I’m not sure we have after this game. But things looked a bit better than against Sagan Tosu last weekend, so maybe we’re heading in the right direction. We started the game with Sung-Ryong in goal, a back four of Tasaka, Nara, Taniguchi and Kurumaya and Neto and Oshima in front of them as usual. The attacking part of the team was announced as being Kengo and Nobori on the wings and a front two of Kobayashi and Abe, but in reality it was Abe up front by himself and Kobayashi on the right and Nobori on the left. On the bench were Arai, Itakura, Kano, Miyoshi, Morimoto, Moriya and Rhayner, Otsuka having disappeared into the wilderness again. I was slightly apprehensive going in to the game as Kashiwa totally destroyed us at home last year and that was a time when we were playing fairly well and with some confidence. So, playing the same team, who this year had been tipped as a surprise package for the title by some, after our stuttering start to the season didn’t look like it would be a walk in the park.

Much like against Tosu and Suwon, we started the game really brightly. We were cutting them open at will in the first 15 minutes making plenty of chances. As usual we were kicking towards the away fans in the first half and it was at this stage that I realized we haven’t scored at the home end of the stadium yet this year. Maybe tonight was to be the night! (It wasn’t…). Cristiano, a player who I always think looks like he has the look of a fifty year old man, (particularly since he went for the silver hair and beard, guess he’s had a hard life!) was looking dangerous coming forward, but also looked like he could be leaving a few gaps in areas he might be supposed to be defending. The Kashiwa defence and midfield seemed to be on a mission to kick lumps out of Oshima. Maybe it was part of their game plan. We were getting free kicks for most of these challenges but I felt like maybe the ref could have taken a bit more control and dished out a few cards. It was nasty spoiling football, but was quite effective. Possibly my understanding of what constitutes a yellow card is a bit out of date, but when you make no attempt at playing the ball and just kick the player on the ball and can keep doing so with little punishment, it doesn’t really seem very fair. I know I’m always moaning about referees, so I’m sorry about that, but they do generally seem to be pretty incompetent recently. For some reason, tonight’s ref didn’t seem to want to let us take any free kicks quickly, which was also getting on my nerves a bit. Guess I was a bit tense! So anyway, we were making some decent chances and unlike against Tosu, they were more often than not on target. Kengo had a decent shot well saved and our front players were causing Kashiwa some problems. Bizarrely, given our recent pedigree in the area, our opening goal came from a corner. Kengo whipped the ball in and Taniguchi outjumped two defenders and angled the ball into the corner with his head. For some reason it seemed to take an eternity to get into the net, but looking at the replay I think this was also due to my underlying tension. So it looked like we were going to go into half time with a one goal lead. But that was not the case. We got a second in injury time at the end of the half. A defensive howler from Kashiwa (the defender seemed to somehow almost nutmeg himself), was seized upon by Abe who could easily have shot but unselfishly chose to square the ball to Kengo who rolled the ball home. I was really impressed with Abe for doing this. He clearly is desperate to get his first goal but did the right thing for the team. Good on him! Apparently this is the best time to score as it messes up the half time team talk the conceding team had prepared.

Maybe not in our case though as Kashiwa came charging out at the start of the second half. They were making loads of chances and getting lots of corners. It seemed inevitable that we would concede from one of these sooner or later and that’s exactly what came to pass. Cristiano was doing a good job of delivering the ball and it found their striker unmarked standing between Tasaka and Taniguchi and he finished pretty easily. Maybe Kobayashi could have done more to stop it as he was standing on the post. But can’t be helped I guess. By this stage, Abe had already missed a bit of a sitter when his shot was initially saved and the ball dropped back to him but he could only power it over the bar. I hope he can score soon as I think he’s been doing a decent job on the whole and out of all of the players who has played as our lone frontman so far this season, maybe he’s been the best. Not long after the goal we made our first sub. Rhayner came on for Nobori who had done a decent job but was perhaps running out of steam a little. There was another big talking point on 70 minutes. Kengo was racing through on the Kashiwa goal and was knocked to the ground by a Kashiwa defender. From the stand it looked like a clear red. From the picture I saw on twitter where the defender had more than a handful of Kengo’s shirt it looked like a straight red, but I also saw on twitter that people thought it was debatable. Looking at the replay on the highlights video, I can’t see why anyone would think that. It looks pretty clear to me. Kengo is also not the sort of player who is going to go down trying to get someone sent off. But yeah, as I always say, I’m biased. After the red card the game didn’t seem to change that much. We still looked under pressure but were getting a few breakaway chances. It looked a bit like we were the team with 10 men rather than Kashiwa as they had plenty of possession and were causing us some difficulties. On 76 minutes a Kashiwa forward (think it was Oliveira) broke forward and under pressure from Nara seemed to fling himself to the ground, I guess looking to get the numbers evened up. The ref booked Nara, but it looked like a dive to me… from the other end of the pitch. There were a few meaty challenges going in and Neto picked up a booking for a challenge he made which people are saying was retaliation for an earlier foul on him. Oniki did the right thing and changed Neto for Itakura shortly afterwards. I love Neto and I think he’s very important for us, but he does sometimes let his passion get the better of him, so well done Oniki for stopping this from happening. There was still time for one last change from us on 89 minutes. Abe was replaced by Morimoto who seemingly was tasked with getting the ball and hanging on to it with his bulk. And that was how the game finished, with Morimoto shielding the ball by the corner flag. Not exactly the most comfortable of victories but I think it was deserved. According to the stats, we dominated on possession and shots. Could have done with a few more of those shots going in though. But we’ll happily take the three points!

Positives and negatives. Let’s start positive today. Pleased for Taniguchi to score again. After not really being able to score from a corner for most of last season, we seem to be looking a bit more dangerous from set pieces, mainly from the head of Taniguchi. Our team is not exactly blessed with height, so it’s good that he’s seems to be getting better and better. Kengo had another good game, apparently with the energy of someone much younger than him. Abe did a decent job of playing up front by himself and I think that’s the best option we have at the moment, with Ienaga still injured. Also, I thought Nara had a pretty good game too. We looked, dare I say it, and I should stress that I am touching wood whilst I am typing this, not too bad at the back. Nara put in some crucial challenges and I’m really pleased, given the ridiculous decision given against him in Hong Kong, that when he was chasing back with a Kashiwa striker he was able to challenge and win the ball. I’m sure they red card was racing through his mind at the time. Sung-Ryong also looked pretty solid. He made some good saves and can’t be blamed for the goal. Oh, and yeeeeessssssssssss! We’re top of the league. I’m trying to get this up quickly whilst that is still the case. Negatives, whilst we were better today, we are still not taking our chances well enough at the moment. We did give Taketomi a free header for their goal so our set piece defending could use some work. And after starting games really well, we do seem to take our eye of the ball a little at crucial stages. We could have conceded a lot more goals in this game. But as I said, we also could have scored a lot more too.

So three games gone and seven points to show for it. The Kashiwa and Omiya victories looked decent enough without being spectacular, but in the game against Sagan Tosu we did look a bit shaky and things weren’t working so well. But, we didn’t lose it, I guess. Of course it’s still too early to say how things will go this season. Next up, we are away to Guangzhou Evergrande on Tuesday, which must be our trickiest ACL group game I guess. If we can get anything from that, it will be a huge boost. Then, next Saturday we are away to FC Tokyo, which is always a fun fixture. I’m sure you have seen the PPAP Tamagawa Classico version. I was wondering why Fronta had such a strange voice until it was pointed out to me that it was Ai Risa voicing him. Sorry Ai Risa! FC Tokyo have been tipped by quite a few people to be serious title contenders this season and of course we know who their number 13 is. I hope he plays the way he did during the last third of last season. Writing this before their third game, they haven’t exactly set the league alight of far, but they have got two wins out of two, so it will probably be our toughest game so far. I’d love a repeat of last year’s scoreline though. So, two tough games. How great things will look in ten days time if we can reflect on a couple of good results. Let’s hope so anyway. Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki (Yellow card 77')

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO (Yellow card 81')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

MF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei
FW 8. ABE Hiroyuki
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota
FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki (on for ABE 89')

MF 13. MIYOSHI Koji

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro
FW 22. RHAYNER (on for NOBORIZATO 68')
MF 25. KANO Kenta
MF 28. ITAKURA Ko (on for NETO 84')

Goals  

TANIGUCHI (Frontale) 42' 1-0
NAKAMURA (Frontale) 45+1' 2-0
TAKETOMI (Kashiwa) 60'  2-1


Highlights

The Frontale youtube channel has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that last year's highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer highlights here if you want.

Vs Sagan Tosu (home) 5/3/17, J-League match 2

Kawasaki Frontale 1 - 1 Sagan Tosu

First home game this season was against Sagan Tosu. We never really seem to do that well against them, so it might not have been the best way to kick off our home campaign, particularly after the disappointment of last Wednesday. It gave Harakawa an early chance to come back to us after his loan move to Tosu and in spite of him scoring their only goal last weekend he didn’t make the starting line up. He did play most of the match though as they were forced into a change pretty early on in the game. The stadium was pretty full and it seemed that us Frontale fans are up for the new season.

That starting line-up unsurprisingly changed quite a bit from last Wednesday with Kurumaya being the only person who started both games. Sung-Ryong was back in goal and the back four was Tasaka, Taniguchi, Kurumaya and Nobori. Michael disappeared from the squad again, like he did after the previous ACL game, but this time it was more understandable maybe … The defensive midfield duo was Neto and Oshima, with what looked like three in front of them, Nakamura, Abe and a back from the wilderness Otsuka, with Kobayashi up front. The subs were Arai, Nara, Morimoto, Miyoshi, Moriya, Rhayner and Itakura. In addition to the greatly missed Elsinho, we now also have Ienaga on the injured list which is unfortunate as he hasn’t really shown us what he can do yet. I hope he’s fit again soon. I've heard that Elsinho is going to be out for a couple more months at least. I thought Nara might be starting as he is presumably now banned for the next three ACL games thanks to a completely incompetent referee, but it wasn’t to be. Maybe he’ll be used a bit more in upcoming games.

The line up was announced as being a 4-4-2 and whilst it felt a bit like that sometimes, Otsuka definitely seemed to be dropping back a bit, so maybe more like the usual 4-2-3-1. But at the same time, the full backs didn’t seem to be getting forward as much and Oshima and Neto seemed to be taking turns to venture much further up the pitch. A couple of initial surprises were that Otsuka seems to have bulked up a bit, or maybe I’ve just forgotten what he looks like. It’s been a while, after all. Also, Neto took some corners early on. I hope this is to give us a bit of variation, rather than because we have a team where no-one is particularly good at corners. We started the game pretty well and scored in the 7th minute. A miscontrol in the Sagan Tosu midfield was seized on by Kobayashi who prodded the ball forward, chased after it and drove the ball home in between the keeper and the near post, with possibly a slight deflection of the defender’s boot. This was a bit of a false dawn though, as although we were making a few chances we were giving Tosu plenty of opportunities to draw level. They were causing us a few problems and we couldn’t get the ball for a while. When we did have a chance, it seemed that it more often than not ended up with an offside, as the Tosu defence were playing a very high line. It was a fairly scrappy first half with both teams giving the ball away unnecessarily. On 34 minutes Tosu were level. A cross from the right was inexplicably punched away by Sung-Ryong when it looked easier to catch it. He got a decent distance on the punch, falling just outside the box to a Tosu player, who unfortunately was able to half volley it into the net through a few players. It was a pretty soft goal to concede and I don’t know why he didn’t catch it. It seemed to be at a good height to do so. Anyway, it was probably no more than we deserved. Our passing was definitely not clicking like it normally does. Also, for some reason we were sending a lot of our goal kicks long. Normally we seem to only do this when a team is really pressing us, but they didn’t seem to be doing so. Unsurprisingly, when we punt it long, the ball comes straight back at us. We don’t exactly have a team blessed with height. I think it’s something that we should be able to do as an option, but not sure why we were doing it so much in this game. The first half ended 1-1. It was very scrappy. Something wasn’t working. Whilst I couldn’t say anyone had played terribly, there were a lot of errors from different players and we weren’t looking good.

Otsuka had had a fairly quiet half, not doing the pretty effective run-around-like-crazy-for-60-minutes thing we have come to know him for. Even so it was a bit of a surprise to see him changed at half time, but it’s nice to see an early change when things aren’t working. He was replaced by Rhayner, who had looked bright at times against Eastern in the week, so things looked positive. Kengo moved into the middle more and Rhayner played out on right. There were more chances at both ends though, so maybe not much had changed but at least Rhayner was looking good though. He seems to be warming up to the J League fairly quickly and given the result today, I’d hope he starts a few games soon. Tosu were quite tight on us bringing the ball out of defence and a quite a few times fouled us as we were starting a counter attack. No cards from the ref though, even though it was the same players doing the same spoiling fouls over and over. It was pretty annoying to be honest and a bit of a destructive way to play football. The ball wasn’t quite dropping for us. We had a few good chances but didn’t seem able to hit the target. Apparently over the course of the game we had 13 shots, ten of which were in the second half, so it shows that we were trying, but very few of them were on target. We were going over the bar or wide of the post and not testing the Tosu keeper much. And we were running out of time. Towards the end of the game Rhayner, for the second time in two matches got pushed in the face and knocked to the ground, this time a hand, rather than the elbow against Eastern. Not even a foul according to the officials and it happened right in front of the linesman. He must be wondering if it’s a special Asian Football Association legitimate technique. I bet if he tries it he’ll be sent off though. He was given a yellow card for a fairly innocuous challenge earlier in the half, so he seems to be a marked man already. The game finished with one last chance for us. A Kobayashi cross was met by Taniguchi, whose header was cleared off the line by a Tosu defender. A follow-up header from Miyoshi went over the bar. So that was that. 1-1 and whilst it was a bit frustrating, it was probably a fair result, as whilst we had created a lot more than Tosu, we were sloppy and couldn’t keep the ball or hit the target very often. Guess we are still a work in progress…

Positives and negatives. Let’s start negative today. Our passing wasn’t good enough and our finishing was woefully inaccurate. We still seem to be trying to work out how we are going to play. We are missing Elsinho a lot. We might be missing Ienaga, but as he hasn’t shown us what he can do yet, we don’t really know at this stage I guess. Positives, I know we conceded a bad goal, but aside from that seemed to defend ok. Rhayner looks like he will be a good addition to the squad. I hope he can get a start soon. Hmmm. Nothing else really.

Up next is Kashiwa Reysol at home on Friday. They absolutely hammered us at home last year so hopefully we can make up for that. They’ve had one win and one loss so far, but they did comfortably beat Tosu away from home which is something we couldn’t do at home. However, at least we don’t have an ACL game this week so maybe our preparation will be a bit easier than it has been the last two weeks. Let’s hope we can get things sorted out a bit though, as although we haven’t been terrible at all so far this season, we still look a lot like a work in progress. We did start last season with an away win and then a home draw though, so we shouldn’t despair. It’s just that last year’s opening home draw saw us scoring four times and that looks quite unlikely at the moment. But still, fingers crossed and let’s hope we can get back to our old ways soon. Go Frontale!

Team

GK 1. Sung-Ryong JUNG

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke

DF 5. TANIGUCHI Shogo

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

MF 21. EDUARDO NETO (Yellow card 90+5')

MF 10. OSHIMA Ryota

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

MF 14. NAKAMURA Kengo

FW 27. OTSUKA Shohei
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu

Subs 
GK 30. ARAI Shota
DF 3. NARA Tatsuki (on for ABE 84')

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki

MF 13. MIYOSHI Koji (on for NOBORIZATO 87')

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro
FW 22. RHAYNER (Yellow card 58') (on for OTSUKA 46')
MF 28. ITAKURA Ko

Goals  

KOBAYASHI (Frontale) 7' 1-0
TAKAHASHI (Tosu) 34'  1-1


Highlights

The Frontale youtube channel has longer highlights provided by DAZN, but given that last year's highlights got wiped when the broadcaster got changed, I'm going to stick with the official J League ones. But you can watch the longer highlights here if you want.

Vs Eastern SC (away) 1/3/17 - ACL Group stage match 2

 Eastern SC 1 - 1 Kawasaki Frontale

I got back from Hong Kong yesterday after a three hour delay sitting on the tarmac at the airport. This was my first experience of an away ACL game and given that it was the first proper ACL match to be held in Hong Kong and the weird ban that Guangzhou enforced on away fans in the first group game, I guess it was many Eastern fans' first experience of a proper ACL match of any kind. It was a fun experience with a few obvious disappointments that I am sure you are all already aware of. I’m certainly looking forward to the home tie against them, if only to get some kind of closure psychologically.  It was also my first time in Hong Kong and that was a slightly strange experience. But I won’t dwell on that as this is a football blog not a travel blog.

There seemed to be a bit of a buzz in the air when we arrived at what was a nice little ground. The majority of the people were seated in two bigger seating areas behind the goals, but we were put just to the left of the halfway line down one of the sides. What I guess to be the Eastern diehard fans were kind of diagonally across from us, the other side of the halfway line on the other side of the pitch. To our right were a more mysterious group who seemed to be there mainly to try to antagonise us and boo every time we got the ball. They did boo for an impressively long time. Given the fact that we finished with 75% possession on the night, they had a lot of booing to do. But it all seemed a little childish given that as far as I know there is no kind of rivalry or history between the two teams. For the most part we are a friendly club and I don’t know why some of their fans felt the need to try and go all British-football-fan hostile on us. There were a section of them wearing Yokohama F Marinos shirts apparently to wind us up, which I don’t think really bothered anyone and they displayed a sign saying we haven’t won a title which according to someone on twitter infuriated some of our fans. But I think that was more wishful thinking from the people who put up the banner and the tweet. I’m sure they won’t get the same kind of treatment when they come to the Todoroki as we always seem quite nice to the away fans. In our section there were a huge number of non-Japanese Asian Frontale fans, which made for a slightly strange experience. I was delighted to see them and many of them came decked out in the latest shirts and training gear, but I guess they were having trouble signing our songs as most of them are in difficult to pick up Japanese. Someone was handing out crib sheets with player details, but it might have made sense to hand out the words for the songs in a language that wasn’t Japanese. But to be honest I don’t know how easy or worthwhile this would have been.

We left a few big players at home (Kengo, Sung-Ryong, Oshima, Taniguchi, Ienaga). Presumably, Oniki is trying to find a balance between the league and the ACL. I think this is a good idea, but I thought Ienaga would have travelled, given that this fixture would have been a good opportunity to get him off the mark goal-wise. Similarly, I was surprised that Abe didn’t start. He travelled but was an unused substitute. Arai, started in goal with a back four of Michael, Nara, Igawa and Kurumaya in front of him. Ahead of that, Itakura and Moriya were the defensive midfielders, with Miyoshi, Kano and Rhayner in front and Morimoto up top by himself. On the bench were Ando, Nobori, Tasaka, Abe, Hasegawa, Neto and Kobayashi. The game kicked off with a load of booing from the Eastern fans, which I initially thought was being aimed at Michael but later realised was just every time we had the ball. I guess this means that Michael had a lot of possession early on. Miyoshi seemed to be coming very deep to collect the ball and was making some nice runs at the Eastern defence. The early Eastern tactic (and to be honest, the only Eastern tactic for the whole game…) was to hoof long balls forward for Bleda and McKee to run after. This tactic and the incompetence of the referee changed the game in the 12th minute. A long hoof upfield was chased down by Nara and Eastern’s Bleda. Nara, in front of Bleda, was holding him off but Bleda wrapped his leg round, tripping Nara and they both hit the deck. Inexplicably, the ref gave a penalty and sent Nara off, condemning us all to a torrid remaining 80 minutes. I’ve heard various opinions on this, but the most generous to the ref seems to have been that it was a dubious penalty. It’s tough on Nara, who was getting his first start in a long time and who I don’t think did anything wrong. And on a personal note, I think it’s tough on the supporters who had travelled so far, to see the game ruined in not much more than ten minutes by yet another incompetent refereeing performance. Naturally, the Bleda put away the penalty and we were going to be in for a tough night.

After this early disaster, Itakura dropped back into the centre of defence, but also seemed to be playing the Neto position he was in before. He was everywhere and was doing a great job. It’s hard to believe he was one of the less experienced players on the pitch. We now had to chase the game and in spite of being a man down, were getting plenty of possession and making a few chances. Rhayner was looking good, with nice control, dribbling and driving at the Eastern defence, but occasionally his passes were going a little off target. But it’s still early days. Michael was having a bit of a nightmare at right back, losing the ball, passes going astray and didn’t look settled all night. I guess it’s still early days for him too, but I think I would rather see him in central defence than at the side. I think he might not play for a few games now though as his performance wasn’t really up to scratch. I hope he can grow in confidence as he could be a useful member of our squad, but at the moment he’s having trouble. Also having a nightmare was the ref, who continued to bamboozle both sets of fans with what seemed to be a psychedelically-enhanced interpretation of the laws of the game. As we have come to expect and should be used to by now, we were getting the rough treatment from the opposition who were pushing, hacking and tripping us quite a bit. Their tactics were working pretty well though. Leave a boot in here and there, deal with our attacks with most of the team behind the ball and smack long balls trying to hit us on the counter attack. We had a few chances in the first half but things weren’t quite working. Shots were hit wide, high or straight at the keeper and generally seemed to be a bit too weak to cause any real problems. 

The second half started with Tasaka replacing Kano and he seemed to gee us up a bit. I don’t think Kano had done much wrong and was surprised it wasn’t Michael or Morimoto that got replaced as neither of them were doing much right. Tasaka made a few good chances, maybe the best of which was a pass to Miyoshi who hit a low and hard shot that was tipped wide by the keeper. Our goal came on 52 minutes and Tasaka was involved. He hit a cross into the box that bounced and seemed to hit Rhayner in the face, who then hooked the ball over his head to Itakura who slid the ball home. So maybe Itakura was playing up front too! It’s great to see him score. He really deserved it. From here on, we were looking for a winner. But, we were still handing them chance after chance through, mainly through defensive slip-ups. They hit the bar with a header when a totally unmarked player was allowed a free run into the box. Thankfully we managed to clear the ball from the huge goalmouth scramble that resulted. Not long afterwards, they had another pretty much free header from a corner as Michael didn’t seem to jump for the ball. Thankfully Morimoto was there to clear the ball from just in front of the line. The referee’s randomness continued. He would play the advantage when it wasn’t appropriate and blow the whistle when he shouldn’t. At least in my opinion, anyway. Fair tackles taking the ball cleanly were punished and a shocking elbow in the face to Rhayner was decided to be unworthy of even a yellow. Moriya put the resulting free kick way over the bar, unfortunately.

A few minutes later he did get the book out for a bit of handbags between Rhayner and the despicable diving and whinging Bleda though, both players getting a yellow. On 69 minutes we brought on Kobayashi for Miyoshi. I guess we had hoped we would be able to give him a rest but time was running out. Once again, I thought Morimoto would have been removed, but I guess he is more suited to this kind of bruising encounter. It is Miyoshi though who was making chances, although he had maybe drifted out of the game a little. Still, we couldn’t get another goal though and on 81 minutes Neto came on for Itakura who had done a magnificent job all over the pitch. We were completely dominating but not scoring and they were still snatching chances here and there. If their strikers were a bit better I think we would have had some serious trouble in this game, as whilst we defended competently at times, we were often gifting them chances. Time was running out fast, but the ref felt the need to stamp his incompetence on the game one more time by giving Rhayner a second yellow in stoppage time. Apparently this was for unsportsmanlike behaviour. It looked more like he stood his ground and an Eastern player ran into him. After receiving an elbow to the face which was not considered worthy of a card, it’s no surprise that he looked a little bewildered by the decision. This was the last action of the game though, as the ref blew up whilst Eastern were getting ready to take the free kick. I have to admit I did chuckle a little at this. They didn’t seem to find it so funny though.

So, 1-1. A pretty bad result for us to be honest, but one which we shouldn’t take all the blame for. At the same time though, we can’t pin it all on the ref. Don’t know if the stats are 100% accurate, but with 74% possession we should have more than fifteen shots I think. And more than six of these fifteen should have been on target. We were lucky not to concede a second, especially when the game got stretched in the second half. I’m not sure if we underestimated them as some critics have said. I don’t think they were very good, but we didn’t perform on the night. If we hadn’t got the early red, I think it would have been a very different game. Of course, I’m biased, but I think the ref had a total shocker of a game. But Michael and Morimoto didn’t do much better. Positives and negatives. Let’s go negative first. Terrible result, terrible ref, questionable performances from some of our players. Michael looks a little out of his depth or hopefully, out of practice. I think he only made one stinker of a blunder against Suwon but he made plenty in this game. Morimoto looks totally devoid of confidence. He either scuffs the ball or rolls it towards the keeper. He needs a few goals quick, I think. But I’m not sure he will have many easier chances than he did against Eastern. Another big negative is the red cards. That will mean bans (unless they are somehow overturned, which I doubt will happen). I suppose Nara and Rhayner should be playing in the league games now. Particularly Nara, as a straight red means he won’t be taking part in the ACL for a while. We had to use players who we were hoping to rest which is a shame. And finally, I guess this has dealt our confidence a bit of a blow too. Let’s hope we can recover that soon. Positives, if I can find any. Great performance from Itakura who was probably the best player on the pitch. Tasaka did well when he came on and Rhayner showed some signs of what he can do. I don’t think he’ll be a big goalscorer but he looks like he can scare defences and make chances for others. Just hope we can find people to take them. That’s about it though I think. Can’t really think of anything else.

Up next, Sagan Tosu at home in the league and Harakawa, back to visit us soon after he left on loan. Hopefully we can bounce back from this disappointment and regain some confidence. Our next ACL game will be away in China the week after next and that will be a big indicator of where we actually are. I guess it will be our most difficult group game, so it will be good to get it out of the way and if we can take anything from it, that will be great. Not sure if it’s good or bad that Suwon drew with Guangzhou. I can’t imagine they will slip up against Eastern like we did, so we have to get a good result against one of the better teams in the group now to stand any chance of progressing. I think things haven’t quite clicked for us yet this season, so hopefully things will start to fall into place soon.

Team

GK 30. ARAI Shota

DF 29. MICHAEL JAMES

DF 3. NARA Tatsuki (Red card 14')

DF 4. IGAWA Yusuke

DF 7. KURUMAYA Shintaro

MF 28. ITAKURA Ko 

MF 19. MORIYA Kentaro

MF 25. KANO Kenta

MF 22. RHAYNER (Yellow card 68', second yellow/red card 90+4')

MF 13. MIYOSHI Koji

FW 9. MORIMOTO Takayuki

Subs 
GK 24. ANDO Shunsuke
DF 2. NOBORIZATO Kyohei

DF 6. TASAKA Yusuke (on for KANO 46')

MF 8. ABE Hiroyuki

MF 16. HASEGAWA Tatsuya
FW 11. KOBAYASHI Yu (on for MIYOSHI 69')
MF 21. EDUARDO NETO (on for ITAKURA 81')

Goals  

BLEDA (Eastern) 14' PEN 1-0
ITAKURA (Frontale) 52'  1-1


Highlights